the big reveal

I finally figured out how to make the big reveal funny instead of tragic. I am sooo pleased. It involves pirates and race politics.

On another front, I am going to attempt to make dolmades with the leaves from the grape pruning I did yesterday and red lentils instead of rice for the stuffing. My friend Israel is having a barbecue tomorrow and it's my role there, as well as elsewhere, to bring an unexpected vegetable dish. Or sometimes three.

The dolmades so far (irreproducible recipes)

So.
I made red lentils -- my favorite low-glycemic substitute for rice, not that I've been doing so well in that department lately, but I love red lentils even though they cost three times what regular lentils cost. I used the rice cooker.

I finely chopped and sauteed 2 spring onions (you know, bulbous, but with green tops) and a green garlic (which was disappointing a bit because it had already begun to form paper and I had to pull that out because it was kind of tough and dumb-tasting).

I soaked some dried apricots (from my tree) and dried boletes (from Zack) in the plum wine I made the year before last (last year's wine turned to vinegar, but very flavorful vinegar).

I hulled about a dozen, definitely less than twenty, green almonds. These are ripening in the bucket, growing a shell after being prematurely wrested from their mother tree. So I had to shell them as well as hull them: the shell is nowhere near hard, but it'sx kind of tough and dumb tasting. The almonds were about one-third jelly and the rest nut, and their flavor is so delicate it might be too bland without the rest of this stuff. If I hadn' had the green almonds I would have gone for pine nuts, almonds, or hazelnuts.

I made a palm-sized bundle of oregano, mint and parsley from my garden and dill from I forget where but probably the Saturday farmer's market I went to a while back -- so it isn't all that fresh but it is still very nice and green and flavorful, no yellow or nasty bits to it at all. I chopped this as fine as my patience would bear. And then I chopped the apricots and boletes as fine as my patience would bear.

I mixed tha all up and added a bare hint of salt and pepper. A little of that stuff goes a long way, in my estimation, considering that there's all those strong flavors in there.

I got a pile of gigantic leaves from the grape vine. If I do this again this year it will be with smallerleaves because they won't be this tender, later on, when they're this big. I also got a pile of other leaves. I lined a chicken roaster (like a turkey roaster, but smaller and made of steel instead of enamel. I got it at a thrift store: I don;t know where you get them new)with reject leaves. I blanched all the others in small batches, using the time they were in the water to smooth and arrange the ones that had already come out of the water. I also had time to roll dolmades.

I took a blob of filling abou the size of a walnut (heh! I said that, just like an old-time cookbokk) and made it sort of oblong. I put the leaf vein side up with the stem pointing toawrd me. I didn't mention I didn't cut the stems off until after blanching them. This made them a bit easier to handle, because it gave me a handle on the leaves.

I put the blob of filling on the leaf right where the stem comes out and folded the leaf inward and started rolling, stopping to fold the leaf inward again as it got wider. I used the gigantic leaves first, then I used 2 medium leaves together. When I used 2 medium leaves I laid the second one on top of the first on, a bit up and to the side. I think that made them easier to roll as if they were one leaf.

Now I have thirty dolmades ready to cover with cooking liquid and steam. But I forgot what cooking liquid I had decided to use, and I have to walk the dog and get ready to visit the mother of the son-in-law elect.